“Hadn’t had on a pair of pantaloons for six months.”

Legendary Texas Ranger John Coffee Hays wasn’t wearing any pantaloons when he was informed that he had been elevated to a commander of the frontier forces in the 1830s, so it didn’t start with Petraeus. From an article in the May 18, 1848 Brooklyn Daily Eagle in which Hays recalled his early career:

“Among the many incidents in the narration of which the usually taciturn young Ranger was accustomed to beguile the long anf laborious night rides of General Lane in pursuit of the guerillas, I recollect the following which may not be uninteresting to your readers.

‘Did I ever tell you,’ said he one night, as we were riding toward Matamoras in a drizzling rain, ‘about my being appointed commander of the forces of the frontier, by the Texas congress?’

‘No–how was it?’

‘Well, when I was fourteen years old, I got in the habit of going with out spies and following trails to find the camps and villages of the Comanches. In a short time I used to go on alone, when the spies would go no further, and sometimes succeeding in finding the enemy and leading our Rangers to their camp. Very soon the officers employed me as a regular trailer, and from that time I was almost always in the woods in pursuit of the Comanches; and for a whole year I have not slept in a bed, and but twice inn a house. Things went on in this way till I got to be about 18 or 19 years old. One day, after an absence of several months, I came into the settlement. Hadn’t had on a pair of pantaloons for six months–‘

‘No pantaloons–what did you wear?’

‘Oh, moccasins,’ said he. ‘A handkerchief was tied around my head–I’d lost my hat three months before–“

‘Lost your hat–how’d you lose it?’

‘Why, six Comanches happened to see me one day and chased me so close my hat came off in the race–when they stopped pursuit I went back, but they had found it. Well, when I got into the settlements they gathered round and began to tell me I had been appointed to command all the forces to be raised for the protection of the frontier. Of course I supposed they were poking fun at my looks and dress, and I was getting mad fast, when some one handed me a letter containing official notice of the appointment.’

‘I shouldn’t have been more surprised,’ he modestly added, ‘if I’d been chosen President of Texas.'”